Road and highway modeling

[jonathan.fertig]

I'm attempting to lay out the existing conditions for a master-plan scale project that requires a TON of sloped and elevated roads and highways (think Boston Central Artery pre-Big Dig). Are there any suggestions for best practices concerning the modeling of these objects? Have people just used the "ramp" tool, or are they doing some sort of toposurface?

[t1.shep]

If you have a topo line file that shows all the roads you need, I would use Revit and make a topo surface. The should show where the roads are and you could also use subsurface to make the roads stand out on your site plans and such.
However, if you're going to be taking a site and making a whole bunch of new roads...I don't know of an easy way to do this in Revit that looks really good without doing a ton of points. In fact, I'm trying to just make one new road on a highly sloped site and came across your question in hopes of finding an easy/efficient way of doing this...
I know there have been a lot of complaints with Revit's site tools, and so far I haven't seen any improvements in the latest release...http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=65242&highlight=roads
I imagine that there are better programs out there for doing site and civil work. Using the pad and ramp tools will only give you a pretty crude representation of the roads, especially if they are cutting across a slope.
However, if someone out there has had success, please let us know...

[benmay]

There are countless ways to achieve what you require with Revit. But it all comes down to what you have to work with, what you require from your model and how much time you have got.

For roads following the ground line I generally just take the 3D topo survey, convert to a toposurface and then use sub-regions to distinguish existing roads on plan. This is fine for 3D views. But sections will just show the sub-region as per the topo material for the full depth. So you would need to use a detail component here in sections to show a road build-up. You can apply kerbs etc to the topo but if you have a topo anything near complicated you can forget using site components as they are very clumsy to use at this stage of Revit. A note of warning with working with the site tools though. On larger size projects you need to be careful with how you use topo's as you can often run into problems with topo surfaces down the track, and you will often have topo surfaces failing or just dissapearing 3/4 through a project

Your other option is using ramps and railings as kerbs\barriers. This is ideal for a road that follows a consistent grade and you can be quite creative here with modelling elevated structures such as elevated roads. Check out this thread for more details on this http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=65037&highlight=rail+track&page=2 Along with a tutorial from an AU class

Following that Revit is not intended for modelling roads etc. On a large project it may be worth pursuing a linked 3D model from another package more suitable for Civil Modelling

[patricks]

You can apply kerbs etc to the topo

Huh? How do you do that?

Now if Revit would just let me pick the boundary of a subregion as the path for a sweep, that would be brilliant! I could use all of my curb (kerb :p ) profiles and sweep them all over my site topography.

[dbaldacchino]

The new sloped pad might help a little. As can the new Swept Blend modeling tool. It's still a hodge-podge of techniques and quite painful in my opinion. I was recently modeling some ramps on a site in 2008 and it was tiresome having to add all those points on the topo surface and set their elevation. At least Revit was (surprisingly) snapping to the ramp and creating the point right where I needed it, even in a 3D view. But I still shudder at the idea of creating complex sitework productively in Revit. Can't say that it can't be done.

[AP23]

In Revit's defence, here are a few images of civil work done by a civil design/build firm. They do pretty amazing work with the use of Revit Architecture. They also use Revit Structure to design and document bridges.

[cyberjuls]

flat sites like this one aren't existing anywhere on earth. Revit is not done for site work, and that's a pain. Architecture always comes with intensive site work, including roads, and path.
I thought 2009 woud have bring thoses tools, but it didn't, now praying that 2010 will.

[Wes Macaulay]

In Revit's defence, here are a few images of civil work done by a civil design/build firm. They do pretty amazing work with the use of Revit Architecture. They also use Revit Structure to design and document bridges.
Well -- never thought I'd see you advocating for such advanced modeling tasks such as we see in civil engineering -- superelevated curves and the like. Much easier to do with a loft tool, wouldn't you think ;-) Ah, well -- we're partly there.

A whole whack of in-place modeling would do the trick, but if the project is massive, you may need to use linked files. Now you may not be able to model spiral to curve and all that, and having to continue to model something in a series of different planes is tedious in Revit -- but yes, it can be done, and that's how I'd do it.

[benmay]

[QUOTE=patricks;834166]Huh? How do you do that?QUOTE]

You can have a hosted site component linked to the topo, but you would need to have a kerb for each change in grade to the topo. If you had a simple topo surface that was a consistent grade then this would work. Quite well. Otherwise you would be there forever modelling the kerbs

[AP23]

[QUOTE=Wes Macaulay;834490]Well -- never thought I'd see you advocating for such advanced modeling tasks such as we see in civil engineering -- superelevated curves and the like. Much easier to do with a loft tool, wouldn't you think ;-) Ah, well -- we're partly there.QUOTE]

No, not really advocating........just showing that under ideal circumstances and a hudge amount of patience and time, you can do some minor civil work.

It's no secret that the majority of architects don't use software geared towards architecture. On the same token, there are a few civil engineer using Revit architecture. Quite ironic